Kate Hennessey is in Leningrad, with colleagues, for the Documentary Festival. The chance of a lifetime, she feels, to collect fascinating footage for her NYC guerrilla film class. It's 1991. Corruption and crime are rampant. Old Soviets are crying out for a return to Stalinism. After attending an "illegal" meeting of women and taping their descriptions of the harshness of their lives, Kate and her new friend Sveta are abducted to a cemetery, robbed, and left to die in the bitter cold. Kate escapes; she thinks Sveta has too. Kate believes the abduction was random. An attack against Kate as she shops along the Nevsky Prospect, and a devastating fire at her hotel make her understand that someone wants her dead. Her videos taped to her body, she flees Leningrad, pursued by a scar-faced KGB officer and the local police who have found Sveta's frozen body in the cemetery. Back home in NYC, Kate finds the danger overseas has come straight to her doorstep, and that nothing is what it seems."Gutsy Kate Hennessey is filming a documentary that targets the harsh choices faced by women in Russia. But killers soon target Kate, and each harrowing escape draws her deeper into the nested plots that threaten. Readers will cheer as she and her Russian friends struggle through the political chaos of Russia¿and America in 1991. --PM Carlson, Murder in the Dog Days"In this intriguing, fast-moving, very readable thriller the authors have effectively captured the Russian atmosphere which, despite perestroika and glasnost, is as murky and menacing as ever--and in which the KGB continues to remain in total control.--Albert Ashforth, The Rendition